Posted
by
timothy
on Wednesday January 14, 2009 @05:53PM
from the get-well-soon dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Network World: "A number of sites are reporting that Apple's CEO Steve Jobs is taking a leave of absence till June at least. Speculation over Jobs' possibly failing health has run rampant in the past few weeks. Prior to the recent MacWorld show, Jobs said he had a hormone deficiency that had caused him to dramatically lose weight. In a memo today Jobs told workers his health issues are more complex than he thought." Reader Bastian227 adds a link to this letter from Steve Jobs on Apple's website, which also says that Tim Cook will be responsible for daily operations, though Jobs will remain involved with major strategic decisions.

Yeah, well adversity does help things along - reading the millionaire next door, people who had to work for their success did much better than those who didn't. Of course, Bill Gates and Paul Allen went to the Lakeside School, so there you go.

I wish him well. As someone who had to retire at age 33 to fight cancer, I know how discouraging it is to have your body spoil what your brain wants to do. But I also found that giving up the full-time job really did improve my health and led to greater productivity in my remaining activities.

If you spent "x" buying Apple at $50 you should have sold half of it when it hit $100. Then you would have still had "x" dollars worth of Apple and "x" dollars with which to diversify into other stocks. Even after Apple's share price takes a big hit tomorrow, it'll probably still be above $50.

do you seriously think anything has fundamentally changed in Apple's business?

Stock price doesn't have anything to do with the actual fundamentals of a company, only how those fundamentals are perceived. Like it or not, Job's absence may have an effect on stock price, even if the company is run exactly the same as it would have, were he still at the helm. Perception is reality; at least in the market.

Seems like a good idea for Steve to take some time. It gives him a chance to see how well Cook handles the shop when no major new products are shipping and seems to indicate that he is at least semi-comfortable that he's got the right management to oversee day-to-day operations, and gives them a chance to fine-tune anything should he want to retire or passes away pre-maturely. As die-hard as he is, I can't imagine him doing the keynotes if he is too frail (physically) to "wow" the crowd.

Since the major aesthetic overhall in the iMac, MBP and MB lines in the past year or two, and OS X 10.6 shaping up to be a smaller update (aesthetically and technically) to 10.5 than the 10.4->10.5 jump was; it doesn't appear that there is going to be much "new business" from now to then. Maybe some hardware line updates to faster chips, and some 10.5.x updates; but nothing major. I'd imagine 10.6 won't even ship until summer [wikipedia.org]; just in time for the WWDC in June.

And I'll BUY BUY BUY tomorrow... do you seriously think anything has fundamentally changed in Apple's business? It still remains to be seen.

Well, yeah, something fundamental has changed. Steve Jobs won't be there. Look at Apple's history. That makes all the difference in the world.

When the guy does die... whenever that is... it's going to be earth shattering in the tech sector, and you'll never see anything like it in this business again. Jobs is the Elvis of the computing business. When he goes, you'll see people weeping on TV. Silly or not, that's the way it will be. And the endless speculation for months (and years) will be "Can Apple survive without Steve Jobs?".

Story goes that Charles de Gaulle [wikipedia.org], who was often referred to as France's "indispensable man" due to his huge influence in setting that nation's course after the Nazi conquest, was asked what he thought of that title.

On a different note, this is a sad day for those owning AAPL shares - expect them to plunge even further than they have over the past year.

No.

If the company is sound, this will be a short term drop follwed by a recovery. If you own shares, and think AAPL is sound without Jobs, then selling makes no sense. Instead, you should be buying the discounted shares in anticipation of a recovery, which is what strong companies do.

On the other hand, if you think AAPL is not strong without Jobs, then WTF were you doing buying AAPL in the first place?

In short, you are making the same mistake all amateurs make.

And no, I'm not a pro, but this point has been emphasized enough, and proven accurate enough, that I take it as correct.

Of course, you have to buy for him to be able to sell. Someone a lot smarter than you will buy from you later after Steve dies and the stock loses 9/10 of it's (nominal) value, but only if it looks like there's leadership that can allow the company continue for long enough for investors to realize they overestimated Steve's role in the company. Say 2 years from now?

Rich people think about the day after tomorrow. Now is not a good time to buy. This stock has nowhere to go but down until at least a few months after Steve is no longer with us. Even then, it will only be worth something if they pull off a successful transition.

apple computers are more luxury items then PCs. in todays economy unless you are completely screwed you really do need to have an internet connection and a computer. a cheap PC will win out every time if someone is watching their budget.

...In difficult financial times the value isn't there for most people....

Apple isn't targeting their products at people in dire financial straits, but to people who still have money. They have never sold stuff to the bottom end of the market, especially commodity items such as computers. That is why they are doing better than the other PC makers. Also, more and more people are beginning to understand that the purchase price of a computer is only a relatively small part of the total cost over the life of one. Having to dork with Windows, buy anti-malware software and being stuck with an 8 year old OS is certainly not lost on people. A smart marketing message by Apple, taking advantage of the MS VISTA debacle is also part of the equation. A Mac OS10.5 Leopard OS runs acceptably well on our old G4 Mac Mini. Getting VISTA to run on PC of equivalent age & specs is an exercise in frustration if the older software even works at all.

That old G4, connected to a 47" LCD TV makes a fine, networked media device for movies and music.

In the car business, Honda is an example. Their cars generally cost more to buy, but they also sell for a lot more used than some Ford or Chevy. This true of used Macs as well. Check that out on ebay if you wish.

I think the market had already priced in about 80% of this news. Unless there is other, unforeseen fallout from this announcement, we're pretty close to where the stock should be. For the last year it has been a question of "when", not "if". Actually, this may be the the jump-start the stock needs; big money has been reluctant to invest in Apple until the uncertainty of Job's condition is cleared up. He should have done this six months ago.

This is true, but intriguingly, Apple also sells iPhones and iPod Touches, which many people can use as substitute computers. A friend of mine got iPod Touch for his birthday and pecks out his documents with the Notes application and emails them around, instead of using a computer.

iPhones are cheaper than any computers, even netbooks, and are not significantly different in price from other smartphones.

Apple has a pretty big iPhone developer community now, and they are compensated pretty well through the App Store. What do those nice folks who made $100,000 do with their well-deserved gains? Buy 17" MacBook Pros, of course. Tax deductible and all that. And as lovely as a well-designed sports car, just a lot cheaper.

The one huge advantage Apple has is that people love their products, so they will scrimp and save and suffer to buy them. For this reason, I expect them to gain market share, especially in tough times. The enthusiasts still buy, while the pragmatists stop buying. Thus, the total market shrinks but Apple's market share is likely to increase.

My Nokia E90 is a hell of a lot cheaper than an iPhone, and it's a damn sight closer to a computer. Can the iPod connect in SSH2 to a server on the other side of the world ? Damn, until the 2nd edition, the iPhone had trouble even making a phone call. It should have been called the iNoPhone.

Bullshit, before the iphone was a twinkle in Steve's eye we had Palm and WindowsMobile doing a lot of things you cant do today with an iphone. Tethering, copy and paste, downloading any app you like, *gasp* running software you wrote, choosing whatever wireless company you want to go with, outlook syncing, voip, etc.

Useless mp3 players? Perhaps useless as a fashion accessory, but I had an mp3 player before the ipod was even released. Worked fine, thanks for asking.

I don't suppose his frequent use of off-list pharmaceuticals and other fun-seeking drugs during his youth would have had anything to do with his poor health. While 60 isn't old, it seems like a lot of people his age who "lived too hard" are now suffering the consequences through odd early/uneven aging, hormonal issues, cancer, auto-immune diseases, and other odd things we've not seen before.

Always pisses me off when people use the argument of "'blah' diseases that we've never seen before" - all we've done is improved diagnostics so we can tell "what" is killing you, and in some cases, "why" you got it.

My first mp3 player, which is still kicking around in drawer or a closeted box, was a Creative Nomad II MG [amazon.com]. $250 for 64 mb and $100 for a 128 mb mmc card -- $350 total. For that, I got a player with controls that were so awkwardly placed on the sides that even after a year of steady use, I had to actually look at it to change songs -- it was ridiculously easy to delete songs instead of skip them. The screen was extra small too.

Several years later I picked up a refurbed ipod for half the price with 15 gb of storage and controls I could use without looking at them. I recently got an 80 gb model, refurb, for half the price of my Creative, and the controls are even better than my old 15 gb model -- as long as I'm not searching through my library, I can control it "eyes-free" effortlessly and without thinking about it. Now, I'm sure most players don't have controls as dreadful as my Creative, but the fact the ipod is easy to use is not some kind of reality distortion event. The ipod is objectively better designed because I can adjust the volume and skip songs without looking at it. With the Nomad, anytime you pressed a button without looking I risked random outcomes up to and including song deletion. Reality distortion would be thinking that the Nomad was better than an ipod.

"MP3 players were drab and virtually useless before the iPod - a few years later everyone had one."

I've never understood why people make comments like this. The iPod was a step backwards in terms of features and such, I'm not even convinced iTunes is any easier to use than the icon I could just drag and drop my MP3s into in Windows either. The iPod was actually quite a late arrival in the MP3 market, many forget that MP3s were already becoming somewhat mainstream (we already had support in some car sound systems for example). It's certainly fair to credit the iPod as the product that took the mainstream, but not necessarily the product that acted as a catalyst for mainstream- the fact you could store thousands of tracks in the space of half a portable CD player and not need to carry media around was already a good enough catalyst. People would've bought players regardless, but it was the style and prestige factor of the iPod that got it most of those sales, as well of course as it being in the right place at the right time- arriving just as the MP3 market was already taking off.

I don't disagree that Jobs and his marketing team were excellent at creating hype and shifting units, but I'm still not convinced it's because the products are necessarily ground breaking, or even that high quality (battery problems, easily scratched screens etc.?).

Apple under Steve has been good at what designer clothes companies are good at, building a brand that people want because they feel it gives them that extra bit of prestige. People will take Armani jeans over some bog standard jeans if they have the opportunity, the bog standard ones may even wear better and be more durable, but for many, the name matters most.

I agree with you more on the iPhone though, certainly it seems to have pushed other companies into gear in some respects, but I think it's worked both ways in a way. Apple came along with a phone with not too many features but with a really nice looking UI and a much more tightly integrated experience. This has pushed other companies to follow, but on the same note, Apple has been pushed to follow the likes of Nokia with 3G, GPS and so on also when it became clear the iPhone was losing customers because of lack of said features so it has been a two way street. The underlying point though is that yes, without Apple, existing phone manufacturers wouldn't have had that much needed push.